Wet-Sanding to remove a scratch

vID:055

Today we're going to have a go at removing this scratch here. We're going to start by sanding down the scratch, what I have here is 2000 grade sandpaper on the end of this nibbing tool, it's stuck flat to that so that when you put it onto the scratch you want to be keeping it completely flat. Otherwise you'll be scratching the paint and not actually sanding it down. We're also going to we the area just to make it a bit lubricated so the sandpaper rubs over it nicely.

So just small circular motions over the scratch. Not too much pressure but enough.

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So now that's done, wipe over it remove all the water from where you've just sanded and you should just be left with a cloudy area around the scratch. When that dries you may be able to see, the scratch there should be hidden in the depths of the haze. If you still see the scratch you can go a bit more, but obviously you have to be careful depending on how much paint there is on the car, the lacquer, if it's had a previous bodyshop repair before, you don't know so you've got to be a bit careful and do it step by step is the best thing to do.

Okay, that's completely dry now, you can still see the scratch very slightly in a couple of areas. You can see a bi here, and a smaller bit in the middle there. I'm going to go a bit more on this I Think, but like I say taking it easy so I don't go through the paint. There's still the buffing stage so that's going to get rid of some of the scratch.

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I've sanded over it again, It's improved that scratch up the top there by a vast amount. There's still a bit in the middle where the panel follows the arch around. It's sort of concave so I'm going to be careful there because it could be thinner paint in that gap, and we don't want to take the risk because if we go through the paint then the whole door has to be painted. So I think we're going to settle for an improvement. So I'll machine polish it now.

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Okay so I've spread over a compounds which is a medium cut compound, just around the area where we're going to be buffing. We're going to be using a head which is average soft, you know when you push it in, so it's not going to be too abrasive. You've got speed settings on the polisher and you can use as much pressure as is required.

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Right okay so that's done. I'm just going to wipe the area clean. As you can see it's made the paintwork nice and glossy again. And the scratch... I will be honest it is very slightly there but it's a little bit too deep that bit. It's right in the middle there. But it's like I said, an improvement... and it's taken the eye completely off it.

There is a final stage, when you take this outside, a black car, machine polishing can create what we call swirl marks or holograms. So we're going to go over it with a finer compound and a finer pad, ,and slow the machine down, just to buff it up to a nice finish.

so again, spreading over the finer compound, were using a foam pad which is this black one here which is similar to the foam you get in packaging so it's very soft. But with the speed of the machine turning it, will create enough heat to buff it up to a nicer finish.

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Okay, we'll wipe that down now, and there you have it, scratch removal done.

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Car Scratch Repair

Arron repairs a scratch using the wet-sanding technique and machine polishing, he'll show you how it's done and the kind of results you can expect.

Not
all scratches can be removed, it depends on how deep they are, but when they
can be done, the service is superb value for money. The scratch on this car
would significantly reduce the resale value, cost in end-of-lease recharges
or for bodyshop repair would run into hundreds of pounds. Our prices for
polishing out a scratch are just a fraction of this -- current prices can
be found on our scratch repair page.
And we offer a money back guarantee, If we can't do it, you don't pay, so you have nothing to lose from trying
us before going down the route of car body repairs.

Repairing vandalism -- removing key scratches. The scratch on this car was removed using paintwork correction rather than smart repair. A shallow scratch on a car paintwork is often easy to reduce with buffing.

With paintless dent removal we removed four dents from the doors of this 350zx. We later machine polished this car so any blemishes would have shown up on the pristine paintwork, so it's important to remove imperfections like this before paintwork correction.